


The Light in the Storm

by TheFriendlyAnon



Category: Edgar Allan Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party (Web Series)
Genre: Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9334742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFriendlyAnon/pseuds/TheFriendlyAnon
Summary: Sarah Wells reflects on those she has loved and lost.Inspired by the fluffy and very historically accurate fic Falling by schuylers, I was intrigued by HG's background and wanted to explore it a little.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is supposed to be fairly historically accurate, but it is based on HG's wikipedia page, so I can't guarantee anything. Also, I've obviously strayed from historical accuracy in places so that it complies with what we see in Poe Party.

The Light in the Storm  
\------

Sarah had never lived a very happy life. She had never had wealth or social status, or even much in the way of good looks. Talent had not rained down from the sky, enabling her to create and make her own way in life. That was how things were. She had accepted that destiny, to her, meant nothing more than finding a stable job as a servant in a good household, and hoping for the right man to come along. 

And of course, he had. But Joseph was not much like the dashing princes she had read about in fairy tales as a child. Nor was he a dark, mysterious figure who swept her off her feet like the heroes of the sensationalist romance novels she pretended not to read. Joseph was a cricketer, he was kind, and sensible, and for as long a time as could be hoped, the were happy. 

When Frank was born, Sarah had felt as if her world had expanded, opening up a new horizon of parenthood and the terror it brought. But Frank was robust and exuberant, and not the kind of child who lends themselves to parental overprotectiveness. Fred was the same, his elder brother in miniature, always following him around, hoping to receive some boxing tips from his idol. And Franny, well, Franny was everything Sarah wished she had been as a child; determined, confident, curious and kind. She was her little starling, flitting about with her brown hair flicking too fast to know where she'd been and where she was going. 

But when the children were only young, when Joseph was finally picking up pace in his matches, when the world seemed to have finally given Sarah the family she'd hardly dared to dream of, when everything was perfect and delightful and just how it ought to be...  
Then came the storm. 

It swept over the little life they had built together as briefly as a shadow across the moon, and yet, the destruction remained. The storm was not truly a storm, of course. Death just sometimes feels that way. It takes one by surprise, catches them unawares, a sudden shock descending, wrecking everything that made life normal. And it never takes who it's supposed to. Sarah wouldn't have minded if it had been her. She wasn't old, but she had lived, she'd seen her small corner of the world, and she knew she wasn't anything special. But of course, Death decided to let her live. Instead it snuffed out the light which had illuminated her darkest days, and she was forced to watch as they packed Franny up in a coffin, carried her gently on their shoulders to the grave. Her little starling, drifting away, the wind taking over, taking away control.

All she knew was that no parent should have to see their child's grave, that no parent should watch an undersized coffin descend, trying keep a brace face for the other children. 

The days that followed turned into months, and Sarah struggled to remember what meaning her life had held before... before...

Joseph tried to console her, tried to be the support she needed, but it was never enough. She found herself at times overwhelmed with passion, then drained and empty moments later. She remained close to Joseph and the two boys, thinking that maybe, just maybe, a miracle would fix everything. 

The pregnancy came as a shock. She was so used to feeling empty that the idea of bringing yet another life into the world seemed alien to her. And yet, from the moment he was born, Bertie gave her hope. He had Franny's inquisitive nature, always wondrous at the world around him. He was kind, and gentle, and perhaps sometimes a little absent minded and nervous, but he was hers. The light reignited, the starling reborn. 

Joseph never seemed to connect with him. He became frustrated at Bertie's sporting incompetence, particularly compared to the other boys, both of whom showed great promise on the cricket field. Frank and Fred were rough with him. They're only playing. It's what boys do. Sarah had to repeat these words to herself every time she was forced to console a sobbing Bertie, patch up the knee he had grazed being pushed over by Frank or Fred. 

When the accident happened, she felt like the storm had descended yet again, trying to steal away another starling. She spent the day the doctor came anxiously pacing up and down outside Bertie's bedroom, cursing the tree he'd fallen from, cursing bad luck, cursing Fred and Frank for not being there to catch him- no. That wasn't fair.   
But still she held her breath as the doctor told her and Joseph the news. The sigh of relief which left her when he'd finished felt as though it had been waiting years to escape.   
Only a broken leg.   
He'll be bedridden for months, but it's just a broken leg.   
He may end up limping for years to come, but it's only a broken leg.   
He's alive.

And of course, Bertie being Bertie, he can't stand the idea of being bedridden for months with nothing to occupy him. He begs desperately for books and puzzles, even bits and pieces of old scrap which Sarah obliges him with because he's alive and she wants to celebrate the fact that he's alive because he's alive and so is she and the world has light in it. She reads him her old fairy tales, and offers him a multitude of novels, but when the supply runs down, he wants more. He starts meddling with pieces of wire to creating spinning contraptions which whirl across the room. He asks for a pen and paper, and begins to create his own worlds, letting the ink spread over each page in an untidy scrawl which conveys the wild imaginings of an eight year old with a flair for inventing. 

And Sarah reads every last word, because it's her son, his imagination, this permanent record of his living, breathing, buzzing creativity. 

At the new school he found it harder to focus his interests, when the constant pressure of copperplate handwriting bore down on him, desperately trying to suppress any ingenuity or inspiration he showed. But Sarah tells him to keep going. Keep writing. Keep inventing. Keep creating the things that make you happy. She continues to read every word. 

When Joseph had his accident, it felt inevitable to Sarah. Life had been too good for too long, and her family were long overdue some cruelty from the fates. Joseph became increasingly frustrated without cricket. Sarah turned to her religion for guidance, but this angered Joseph more, as he started to struggle with the clashes between their ideologies. When they were younger, Sarah had always admired Joseph's freethinking, open minded attitude, despite the ways it clashed with Protestantism. And yet now it seemed that he was no longer as tolerant of their differences. 

Bertie was the one who suggested the shop. Sarah encouraged it, desperate to get Joseph back into the professional field. And, for a while, they adjust, and are happy. They aren't earning as much as before, but it feels like happiness has reappeared. 

But the financial difficulties only get worse. And soon it's hard to make ends meet at all, even with all three boys working long hours in awful jobs to try and help make ends meet. Sarah hates it. Fred and Frank cope fairly well with the apprenticeships. They like the rough, manual work required of them. But she can see that Bertie isn't flourishing. The excitement which usually filled his eyes every time he started to explain another invention or story seemed to have dimmed a little. 

So when the job offer came at Uppark, Sarah didn't hesitate. They needed the money, she insisted. It was for the good of the boys, she explained. Joseph wasn't happy, but he agreed. And that was the last time she truly felt married. 

Uppark was wonderful, well paid, with a kind mistress who, although not willing to let Sarah's family live there, was perfectly content to allow frequent visits from them. To start out with, the whole family visited her every Sunday during her hours off, Frank and Fred boasting of their successes in the firms they were now in, Joseph remaining civil and polite, as if speaking to a distant cousin he barely remembered, rather than the woman he had married. Bertie came too of course, giving her his latest manuscripts to read or devices to admire.   
And soon the frequency of the visits decreased, until only Bertie ever made it on a regular basis. They would talk, taking it in turns to listen attentively, until she was forced to start working again. Sometimes, he would stay, heading off to the enormous library to delve into the depths of classic literature. 

And again, she made it happy. It was her little routine, something regular and unchanging, and the constancy made her happy. That's what she told herself. 

And Bertie was going from strength to strength. A teaching position, job offers, a place at a university! He would write to her about what her was learning, try to explain the muddled concepts that seemed so simple to him. And of course, he kept sending her pieces of his writing. Sarah was proud. He may not have been the strongest, most confident young man she'd ever seen, but his brains had taken him a long way from being the little boy who sobbed when an older brother pushed him over in the back garden. 

And finally, success. He published his first novel, which was soon followed by a second and a third, and Sarah couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the whirlwind of success her youngest son was experiencing. Frank and Fred had long since settled down, married and found stable incomes. But Bertie, now insisting that peers call him HG ('it's terribly embarrassing mother, they all laugh'), wasn't content to sit down for one moment. To him, life was there for exploring and inventing and creating, and he was determined to live it properly. 

Then a call came, he'd explained to her on his latest visit, from America, asking him to join a course of study there. He couldn't refuse, it was an unmissable opportunity. And so Sarah gave her blessing for him to go (not that it was needed - he was an adult who could make his own decisions), and off he went. 

The letters were slower to arrive, of course, but still she delighted in reading about his new friends, discoveries, advancements in technology. He was still raving on about time travel, but Sarah hoped this was for a novel, rather than a machine; she couldn't stand the idea of her Bertie trying to work on something so hopelessly futile. 

Then, on a morning in early September, as the leaves were beginning to crisp and turn golden, she received another letter, filled with excitement. He'd been invited to a dinner party for brilliant writers. He'd get to meet other likeminded people, to discuss his more avant-garde ideas without judgment. The excitement was impossible to suppress. Sarah simply smiled, happy to see her son finally amongst his own people, instead of remaining a peculiar outsider his whole life. 

Little did she realise that this was the last letter he would ever send her. 

Life isn't fair.   
That had always been the response when one of the boys complained about a minor injustice.   
Life isn't fair.   
She's never really thought about how true that statement was before.   
Life isn't fair.   
It hadn't been fair to her, robbing her of a child, leading her family to the edge of financial ruin.   
Life isn't fair.   
But she's had her fair share of good luck. Bertie was a blessing, a delight she'd never deserved.   
Life isn't fair.   
And death wasn't either. 

It was a kind of shock which left her numb and unfeeling. A single telegram, black-edged, sent all the way from America. Only a few words to explain what had happened. A letter followed, providing more detail. Asking her if she wished to visit America to reclaim his body, bring it home to bury.   
Murdered.   
Dead.   
Her son. 

Sarah finds herself cursing every being on earth who continued to live and breathe in a world in which some insane bastard had robbed Bertie of that pleasure. She travels to America, but cannot appreciate the country. Some foreign Yankee madman and his witch accomplices had snatched away some of the most promising lives in the literary world before they had a chance to grow. They'd taken Sarah's light, her guidance through every storm and hurricane, and they'd snuffed it out. She was not the vengeful type, but the eternal punishment she wished on Edward de Vere was more terrible than any she could have conceived. 

No one should see their child die.   
Not twice in a lifetime.   
Sarah wishes for the impossible. She imagines a world where the dead could be brought back, could return to fight another day, could return to share their brilliance with the world once more.   
"I do not live in such a world." she says when they show her the body.   
"I do not live with that privilege. I must face the fact that those I love are gone."

She reaches out for him, but he is cold and unresponsive. She knows there is no hope. "He is gone." 

A swish of fabric behind her. A sudden change in the atmosphere.   
She turns, and a woman in a white dress stands in the doorway, holding a pair of very familiar goggles.   
The woman smiles a little, and says:  
"Are you sure about that?"

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully this was ok, it's my first time publishing a fic I've written so hopefully it isn't too awful, please let me know if you had any thoughts.


End file.
